I want to remove the switch on an optical drive and wire in another one that will be external to drive itself. I can probably find one at radio shack but the problem is I have no clue about the naming of switches. So what kind of switch does an optical drive use? Normally open push button switches?

Thats an optiplex dongle that provided continous power to the read and crystal array. If you want to add a second "power on/off switch" you need to route the 3 and 4th jumpers to the 1/2 position instead of the 0/1. This is because those jumpers provide uniplex operations and prevent any aditional interrupted power switches to be connected.


Just get a molex remote control switch and place it between the power connection of the PSU and the Optical drive...easier.

Whoa. What kind of language are you speaking? Isn't optiplex a name of a line of Dell's laptops? Isn't a dongle like a security key or something? What is a read an crystal array? Optical drives have jumpers? What the heck is uniplex? It's not in the dictionary. If I have a remote control between the psu and optical drive then that would only control whether or not the optical drive gets power. It wouldn't eject the tray.

Anyway, I bought a N.O. (normally open) momentary push button switch from radioshack and used it on an old computer, and it works. I didn't even have to remove the other push button switch. But the computer doesn't have an operating system installed so I don't know if the drive can read disks. I have yet to try it on my useable computer.